7 ideas
16186 | The Barcan Formulas express how to combine modal operators with classical quantifiers [Simchen] |
Full Idea: The Barcan Formula and its converse gives expression to the most straightforward way of combining modal operators with classical quantification. | |
From: Ori Simchen (The Barcan Formula and Metaphysics [2013], §1) |
16187 | The Barcan Formulas are orthodox, but clash with the attractive Actualist view [Simchen] |
Full Idea: The Barcan Formulas are a threat to 'actualism' in modal metaphysics, which seems regrettable since the Formulas are validated by standard modal logics, but clash with the plausible and attractive actualist view (that there are no merely possible things). | |
From: Ori Simchen (The Barcan Formula and Metaphysics [2013], §1) | |
A reaction: He notes that the Barcan Formulas 'appear to require quantification over possibilia'. So are you prepared to accept the 'possible elephant in your kitchen'? Conceptually yes, but actually no, I would have thought. So possibilia are conceptual. |
16190 | BF implies that if W possibly had a child, then something is possibly W's child [Simchen] |
Full Idea: In accordance with the Barcan Formula we assume that if it is possible that Wittgenstein should have had a child, then something or other is possibly Wittgentein's child. | |
From: Ori Simchen (The Barcan Formula and Metaphysics [2013], §5) | |
A reaction: Put like this it sounds unpersuasive. What is the something or other? Someone else's child? A dustbin? A bare particular? Wittgenstein's child? If it was the last one, how could it be Wittgenstein's child while only possibly being that thing? |
21982 | I only wish I had such eyes as to see Nobody! It's as much as I can do to see real people. [Carroll,L] |
Full Idea: "I see nobody on the road," said Alice. - "I only wish I had such eyes," the King remarked. ..."To be able to see Nobody! ...Why, it's as much as I can do to see real people." | |
From: Lewis Carroll (C.Dodgson) (Through the Looking Glass [1886], p.189), quoted by A.W. Moore - The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics 07.7 | |
A reaction: [Moore quotes this, inevitably, in a chapter on Hegel] This may be a better candidate for the birth of philosophy of language than Frege's Groundwork. |
16188 | Serious Actualism says there are no facts at all about something which doesn't exist [Simchen] |
Full Idea: Serious Actualism is the view that in possible circumstances in which something does not exist there are no facts about it of any kind, including its very non-existence | |
From: Ori Simchen (The Barcan Formula and Metaphysics [2013], §1 n4) | |
A reaction: He suggests that the Converse Barcan Formula implies this view. It sounds comparable to the view of Presentism about time, that no future or past truthmakers exist right now. If a new square table were to exist, it would have four corners. |
2384 | Those actions that follow immediately the last appetite are voluntary [Hobbes] |
Full Idea: Those actions that follow immediately the last appetite are voluntary. | |
From: Thomas Hobbes (Letters to the Lord Marquis of Newcastle [1652]) |
2385 | If a man suddenly develops an intention of doing something, the cause is out of his control, not in his will [Hobbes] |
Full Idea: When first a man hath an appetite or will to something, to which immediately before he had no appetite or will, the cause of his will is not the will itself, but something else not in his own disposing. | |
From: Thomas Hobbes (Letters to the Lord Marquis of Newcastle [1652]) |